The Interplay of Variation and Change in Contact Settings

In Pomak (Greece), we attest to the loss of a morphologically overt expression of mediate information, passing through a stage of variation (determined by syntactic, semantic, and discursive criteria). This change takes place in a trilingual setting where the main contact language (Greek) has no grammaticalized form to express mediate information, while the second contact language (Turkish), has a verbal past paradigm specialized for evidentiality. This phenomenon is analyzed within a multiple causation approach in which language contact acts as a catalyst.